Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH) Claims Process Setup

ICANN requires Registrars to notify applicants, in the first 90 days after the Sunrise Period for any new gTLD, if the name they're trying to register has a pre-existing Claim in the Trademark Clearinghouse. A Registrar must obtain the relevant claim information from the Registry and the TMCH and display a notice to the applicant, real-time, upon check availability.

Note

This requirement is limited to the new gTLD domain names only. No ccTLDs or other extensions being launched are affected by this.

Implemenation

During the check availability of a domain name in the claims period, if the name matches a label registered in the Trademark Clearinghouse, the Registry will provide a lookup key to the Trademark Clearinghouse database. The system will obtain the lookup key and return it as a Token.

On the Supersite, existence of a Trademark Claim will be indicated while adding the domain name to the shopping cart.

API users will receive the Claim status and Token as additional response parameters with the domain name check availability call.

The Claim Notice will explain to the applicant the significance of the Claim, and will require the applicant to agree that his / her / their registration of the domain name does not infringe on the Trademark rights listed in the notice.

If the applicant does continue with the registration, appropriate confirmation needs to be sent to the Registry.

The SuperSite will handle sending of the confirmation to the Registry.

API users will pass this extra information through the Domain Name Register API call.